


Petrichor

by ddrabbles



Series: Cassius (OC) [3]
Category: Devil May Cry
Genre: Angst, Drinking to Cope, F/M, M/M, Melodrama, Original Character(s), This Fic Does Not Promote Smoking, Unrequited Love, a longer fic than it needed to be and yet still shorter than it probably should have been
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-04
Updated: 2019-12-04
Packaged: 2021-02-26 05:27:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,607
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21668182
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ddrabbles/pseuds/ddrabbles
Summary: A month Nero spent away from him, a month he spent with his wife, and the moment he’s back he’s already making Cass’s chest ache. Maybe Cass was expecting some sort of remarkable transformation in himself, his heart to finally concede that 'yes, I understand that things have to be different now'. But it’s just not there."Hey Nero," Cass's voice cracks and he winces, straightening up a little. "Long time no see?""No kidding," Nero scratches the back of his neck.---Sequel to Hiraeth
Relationships: Kyrie/Nero (Devil May Cry), OC/Nero, onesided OC/Nero
Series: Cassius (OC) [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1445686
Kudos: 20





	Petrichor

**Author's Note:**

> [[content warning in the end notes, warning for major spoilers]]
> 
> When I wrote Hiraeth I ended up making an OC out of the reader character in it, and so this is the continuation based on him and his whole deal. I am not sure how much sense it's going to make to people who I haven't been ranting about this dude to, but bone appleteeth *finger guns*

A bead of sweat traces the line of Cassius’s jaw, the trail of it almost cold in comparison to the desert sun. Distantly, he worries that his pace is going to get him dehydrated even faster, but it’s harder for him to take it slow when he knows, somehow, that the wholeness of his body is temporary. Every step he takes is steady even as his feet sink into the hot sand. That’s wrong somehow, even if he can’t remember why. 

All he remembers is the endless desert and the choices he made- to walk, directionless but resolute, and to never look back. 

* * *

Cass wakes to the sound of Nico shuffling in the kitchen. Reality comes back to him like a fog dissipating, his world turned back from formless into rigid. He lifts up slowly, one hand propping his body and the other clasped around the tight muscle in his thigh. He’s got the doctor’s stretching printout taped on the back of the passenger seat, right where he can see it every morning. He grabs his knees and leans forward until his face presses into him. 

“You finally up?” Nico caws from the kitchen, stuffing a slice of jam-covered toast into her mouth. “We’re at Nero’s. Got a few more things to prep before we go.”

“I’m on it,” Cass mumbles into his knees, jaw clenching and unclenching around stifled hisses. “Did he give you any more details about the mission?”

“What, in the six hours since he gave it to us? Nope. Hasn’t even come down yet.” Nico watches him get up, lips pursing as she glances at the diagrams of stretches he didn’t cover. Cass limps toward the kitchen and tosses open the fridge to grab his juice carton. “Hey. You feel ready?”

Cass wordlessly stares at her over the rim of his glass, and her hands fly up in front of her like protection from his gaze. “Right, right. No more askin’.”

It's been a month since the wedding. Summer should be giving way to fall, scorching sun giving way to mild weather. Instead Cass is waking up with sweat dotting his forehead and cracked lips. Even after weeks working inside the van, he isn't used to the way the morning sun turns the entire cab into a sauna. Even in direct sunlight, it’s cooler outside. 

Long gone are the days that Cass jokes about stealing Nico's shorts for himself- he's devolved into wearing paper-thin tanks and rolled-up jeans. Part of him is afraid that he really will take a pair of scissors to his clothes one of these days. It’s kind of getting to that point. 

By the time Cass sets his sixth box of scrap material down on the van’s workbench, he’s sweated through his thin white shirt. From the front of the van, Nico lets out a little hoot of joy and even before Cass looks up, he knows she’s earned the dirty look he’s ready to shoot her. His apprenticeship under her was ostensibly been about him learning a new trade; thus far it’s been about fifty percent smithing and fifty percent hauling around materials for her. Not that he's not already grateful for the bits of progress he’s made, it's just considerably harder to keep all of her favors in mind while she's hogging the dashboard fans like that.

"My turn," Cass shoves past Nico to get to the dashboard and sighs in relief, flicking his drenched hair around like a dog. The fans are just pushing the air around, but they can both pretend it's way more refreshing than it is. Cass lifts his shirt again, angling his stomach toward the fans, and god it works so much better against his bare skin.

"Oi!" Nico jabs her apprentice in the side, making him jolt and swat at her hands. "Quit hoggin'!"

"I'm not hogging! A minute each before we go back to work, that’s always been our deal!" Cass sighs, pointedly not mentioning that Nico’s break started the moment they arrived. He peers at the clock- 10:04 am, about an hour past when Nero wanted to leave. He grabs a water bottle from the back behind the seats. "Whatever we’re going for, I bet we’re going to be late.”

“I’ll bet he’s sayin’ cheesy dedicated goodbyes. It’s been half a year since his last real mission—  _ oi _ !” Nico grabs Cass’s arm, stopping him just before he empties the water bottle over his head. "Outside, dumbass! You wanna do your wet t-shirt bullshit you don't get my van all soaked with it."

"Oh, like it doesn't need the wash." Cass groans, re-capping the bottle. He’s seen her do the same thing a dozen times this past month but her van, her rules. He saunters backwards to the door, snatching his cane off the couch on the way. "I still want the rest of my time when I get back!"

"Yuh-huh," Nico's turned back to the fan before Cass has even reached the door handle and he just knows she's gonna fight him on it. He hurries out of the van, quietly congratulates himself on not tripping over his cane again, and upends the water bottle over his face before his second foot even touches the ground.

It's hard to feel clean with so much motor oil and sweat caked on, but this feels close to it. For a moment Cass is able to quiet that awkward stuttering in his chest, and forget the way he leans on his cane. He can just breathe for a second.

Since the Qlipoth it feels as though he's never had time to do just that-

Well, no. That isn't right, is it?

There were a few months after the Qlipoth when things almost felt something like okay. The redefinition of normal, where rubble on the streets was the new litter and people buried crumbling remains instead of bodies. But it was as normal and okay as it could have been.

People can adjust to anything, can find normal in anything. He left the Order, he left Fortuna- he’s built a new life for himself once before, and he can do it again. But he doesn’t want to. Hasn’t he lost enough? He wants to cling to a life and an emotion that fills him to the brim moments before gouging him into a shell, and at the same time he wants to pry off the fingers that still cling to it and scream that he’s only hurting himself- 

Cassius tucks the water bottle into his pocket, presses the heel of his free hand firm against his closed eye. "God, shut up already."

"Cass?"

He leans hard on his cane for the turn, squinting against the sun as he combs his hair back from his face. He knows who it is even before he spots him _. _

Nero looks exactly like he remembers, not an inch of him new or unexpected, and still he seems to snatch the air out of Cass’s lungs. A month Nero spent away from him, a month he spent with his  _ wife _ , and the moment he’s back he’s already making Cass’s chest ache. Maybe Cass was expecting some sort of remarkable transformation in himself, his heart to finally concede that  _ yes, I understand that things have to be different now _ . But it’s just not there. 

"Hey Nero," Cass's voice cracks and he winces, straightening up a little. "Long time no see?"

"No kidding," Nero scratches the back of his neck.

Cass has thought a lot about what it would be like to see Nero again. There's a million things he wants to ask and a million more he wants to say, things he keeps promising himself he’ll never let slip. The time for saying those things is long past, he knows. 

"You two all packed up?" Nero readjusts the backpack slung over his shoulder, taking long strides to the front door of the van.

"Just about. Go on in and brief Nico." Cass turns to the boxes as Nero disappears through the door. The last ones out are the biggest so far. Just the sight of them makes Cass grit his teeth anxiously.

He grabs the 'X' of the ties at the top, huffs, and curls the weight up to his shoulder. He's had practice for this, but hauling the load with one arm is still a strain; his arm trembles and his wrist bends back with the weight. If he works slowly he can manage it without letting go of his cane. He sets the side of the box on his hip- the one supported by his good leg- and shuffles the box over. The back door of the van is still wide open, so it's smooth sailing once he gets a rhythm.

He drops the box onto the floor of the van, and the parts rattle inside loudly. Nero's head flicks toward Cass for a moment before turning back to Nico. Cass catches the way his eyes widen just before the double take. Nero’s brows draw down and squeeze his eyes into frustrated slits. He takes no more than three stomps to cross the distance to the bumper.

"Cass, get in here. I'll do the rest." Nero hops off the end and grips the ‘X’ at the top of the other box, tossing it up onto his shoulder with an effortless swing. 

"It's just one more." Cass says, voice soft from the tightness in his throat. Nero takes a high step onto the bumper and climbs into the van. He drops the box onto the workstation with a clatter.

"We've gotta get going already. We’re late as it is." Nero holds a hand out, an offering to help Cass in. 

Cass isn’t paranoid enough to believe it was a test. Knowing that doesn’t stop him from feeling like he’s failed somehow. He hooks the handle of his cane into its usual loop on the ceiling and drags himself up unassisted. Nero’s hand closes around nothing and he folds his arms, sighing. Cass yanks the back door closed with his cane. Nico chews the tip of her cigarette, folding up her map along its deeply creased lines.

"Trip’s gonna take a little longer than we thought. Road out to Pietas still ain’t cleared yet, so we’re gonna be makin’ a detour up that way.” She gestures somewhere past the passenger window. 

“Pietas?” Cass scrubs his hand down his face, leaning against the workbench. He’s heard the rumors and made his own personal vow to never go near the place. The god may be different, but towns like those always remind him far too much of Fortuna. “Alright. How long is the drive?” 

“Gonna be at least one day goin’ and one day leavin’, and guess it depends on that one,” Nico points at Nero, “How long we’re takin’ there.”

“You two got enough supplies for that?” Nero glances between the two gunsmiths. 

Cass rubs his temple with this thumb. “How many breakers and bullets are you expecting to run through on the road?”

“I meant like, food and water.” 

“Oh.” 

“We stocked up yesterday,” Nico waves flippantly and stubs out her cigarette. “Ain’t got three sleeping spaces though.”

Cass stares at Nico. “I’ll sleep in the passenger’s seat.”

“The job itself shouldn’t take too long.” Nero crosses his arms. “The client is this woman named Aina. She gave me this cryptic call a few days ago, said that if she didn’t call me again that she wanted us to swing by her town and clean stuff up. Demonic pest control, but she said Pietas couldn’t handle even a few little ones.”

“That seems kind of...sketchy.” Cass glances at Nero. “Did she say why she was calling in advance?”

“Said she couldn’t tell me.” Nero grimaces, as if in memory of her stubbornness. “But she’s paying really good money. She wired some ahead just for my pinky promise that we’d come around.” Nero trades a look with Cass, and shrugs so hard it’s borderline aggressive. 

“The longer we wait around, the worse it’s going to get,” He continues, turning to look at Nico. “At worst we take a trip using what she prepaid, and we still have a lot left over.” 

Nico snorts and unhooks her arms from around the headrest, turning to face the wheel. The leather squeaks loudly as she gets settled. 

“I get it, I get it.” She cranks the engine and it roars to life. The floor rumbles between their feet for a moment, and then the van lurches forward and Cass has to grip the workbench to stay steady. “Cass, first switch is gonna be a few hours in. You go ahead and keep workin’ on your project.”

“Will do,” He pops under the counter and leans down by the cardboard boxes piled up in the corner. It’s easy to find- it’s not one of the ones he brought in from Nero’s garage, and it’s tucked exactly where he always leaves it. The label on the box,  _ ‘HELLCAT’ _ , is scrawled so large that it’s visible even in the lowlight. 

Even as he shifts into working mode it’s hard to ignore Nero’s boots, still visible under the counter. Cass’s heart races, the sight oddly familiar in ways he doesn’t want to address. He grips the bench to steady himself as he straightens up. 

“Hey,” Cass slides the box onto the counter. “You should go sit up front.”

* * *

The road out of Redgrave dwindled out into unpopulated nothingness about three hours into the drive, and Cass is grateful for that. Outside of the city, the stars are as bright as they were in Fortuna. That place feels a world away now, but on nights like these he can almost believe the fact that that place existed under the same sky. It’s freezing at night out here, but the way the air numbs his face and fingers is almost refreshing. 

Climbing up on the roof of the van has been easier ever since he convinced Nico to install a ladder. She said she didn’t want to wake up one morning to find him with a broken neck from trying to scramble his way up, so that was that. 

Cass spends a lot of nights up here. Even if the pain didn’t keep him up it would be the dreams. Lately it’s been the same one, over and over- he finds himself standing alone in the desert, baking under the sun. Eventually it warps into something incomprehensible but every night for the past month he’s found himself there, nothingness spanning in every direction. Just a week ago he started to walk it. Each one of his steps sank deep into the sand but he couldn’t come up with any better plan than to just  _ take _ them over and over and over until he woke up coated in sweat.

He’s sick of that fucking desert. 

Cass brings his mug up to his face for another sip. Two shots of whiskey pour out all over his mouth, his chin, up his nose.

“ _ Fuck _ ,” He sputters, whipping up into a sitting position and coughing hard into his elbow. Right, he was laying down. He eyes his whiskey bottle, almost a third empty just from tonight’s binge. He wonders blearily how much more drinking it’ll take before giving himself a concussion will look like an accident. And then he wonders how many more self-inflicted injuries it’ll take before he learns it won’t make his problems go away. 

“Cass?”

Cass kicks the bottle off the roof. “Yeah?”

“What’re you doing up?” Nero’s boots make loud thuds with every step. Cass hopes distantly that Nico can sleep through it. 

“Stargazing.” Cass watches Nero out of the corner of his eye. He’s closer now than he was when they first met that afternoon, but there’s still a gap between them. Nero sways a little and the entire van follows the motion. 

“Can’t sleep?” Nero asks, and Cass shrugs. Several awkward moments pass. “Are you avoiding me?”

He knows where Nero got that idea. The silence hung heavily between them all afternoon- it was the closest they had been in a month, but barely a few sentences passed between them. It was different than the times they would spend together when they were kids, enjoying each other’s company wordlessly. It was like Cass could barely see Nero through the haze of all the things he wished he could tell him and all the things he wished he didn’t. 

“No. Just busy with my,” Cass fumbles for words. “apprenticeship.”

“If you say so,” Nero takes a seat beside Cass, hooking his leg over the edge of the van. He lifts his feet just enough so they don’t bang against the window. 

Cass groans, trying to spin the noise into something a little more of a joke and a little less honest. “Hey, find your own roof.”

Nero snorts and shoves Cass’s shoulder. Cass could roll with that most days, but most days he doesn’t have five or six shots of Wild Turkey in his system. He careens dangerously forward, nearly toppling off before Nero scruffs him by his jacket collar. 

“Hey!” Nero slides him back from the edge by a good foot or two. Nero starts up another sentence, stops, and clamps his hand over his nose. “Shit, Cass, you been drinking?”

“That obvious?”

“Did you down the whole bottle?” Nero snaps, “The hell are you thinking? We’ve got a mission tomorrow.”

“We? I’m just assisting.” Cass pats Nero’s chest reassuringly. “Don’t you worry. I’ll be all ready to hand you the goods when we get to Pietas tomorrow night. We still got like twelve hours ‘til we get there and it’s not like I’m doing much.”

It’s quiet between them for a long moment. Nero lets go of Cass’s collar. Cass slides his hand off Nero’s chest. 

“You’re real talkative now.” Nero mumbles. “Didn’t say half as much during the whole drive today.”

“You know I’ve always been a chatty drunk,” Cass sighs, propping himself up on one hand and lolling his head back to watch the stars. Nero stares at him quietly for so long that Cass has to look over and check that he’s not asleep. “Right?”

There’s a deep crease between Nero’s brows. He drops his head and shakes it lightly. When he looks up again it’s gone. “Remember when we snuck a bottle of that ceremonial wine back to your quarters?” 

“I know what you’re going to say. Don’t you dare say it.” Cass hisses, face scrunching. 

“And you told me about the heels-” 

“No!” Cass clamps a hand around Nero’s mouth, scowling. Nero smiles under his palm, eyes crinkling up at him. If Cass’s heart is a garden, Nero’s smile has always been the springtime; even just a moment of it makes something grow in his chest. He drops his hand. “Stop talking about me. Talk about you. How are you?”

Nero hesitates, but the word comes out sincere. “Good.”

“Give me more than that.” He prods, leaning in. “How was the honeymoon?”

“Good,” Nero starts, then corrects himself. “Really good. Didn’t want to get back to work yet but we need it. I’ve already got a bunch of jobs lined up.”

“Spend too much during vacation? If you need to borrow some cash-”

“No, no, it’s more… preparatory.” Nero slouches, resting his forearms on his knees. Cass never thought he could hate anything about Nero but he hates,  _ hates _ the way Nero is making him drag the words out piece by piece. 

“For what?” He asks, too drunk to stop himself but too sober to be unafraid. Nero looks at him. 

“Kyrie’s pregnant.”

Cass’s heart rattles his entire chest. It’s a moment, like so many other moments, that he’s powerless to keep from burning into his memory. The sky spanning with stars as far as he can see, the cold metal of the van under his palms, the way the moonlight makes Nero’s hair almost glow, and that feeling that he’s making the same mistakes over and over again. 

There was something Cass read once about how people make their decisions. ‘Fast and frugal heuristics’- rules that, in the split seconds where choices need to be made, become the laws that direct action; not optimal, or rational, or perfect, only immediate. To a soldier-  _ don’t break ranks _ . To a miser- _ buy the cheapest _ . To Cass, always- Nero deserves to be happy.

“Congrats,” Cass blurts. “Damn, Nero, congrats! You-” He swallows, tongue sticking to the roof of his dry mouth. “You two must be so excited.”

“We are,” Nero says, stopping shy of the grinning mess Cass would have expected. “Things are already pretty tight taking care of the orphans though, so...”

“So you took this sketchy job?”

“Yeah.” Nero scratches the back of his neck. “No idea when we’ll get another payday like this. It’s more than Dante makes in a year. Not that that’s saying much. ”

They sit in silence for a moment. A breeze flutters by, rustling Cass’s hair and making him squeeze his jacket tighter around himself. 

“The offer stands,” Cass breaks the silence, staring down at where the whiskey bottle lays in the dust. “If you need help with money or anything.”

“You making that much off of gunsmithing already?” Nero snorts, “Nico must be one hell of a teacher.”

“Are you kidding me? I’m nowhere near selling yet. Nico’s all,” Cass puts on a heavy southern drawl, “‘Learn by doin’, Pretty Boy. The idea was all you, and I already did the hard part.’” 

Nero tries to hold back a laugh but it bursts out between his lips. Cass has  _ missed _ that laugh, finds himself staring at Nero’s profile as the latter ducks his head down and tries to stifle it. 

“I think she’s just tired of trying to hammer in a dull nail. I fucking suck at this.” 

“She saying that about that project you’re working on? You ever gonna tell me what it is?” 

“It’s… a Devil Breaker.” Cass murmurs. Nero turns to him, brows raised and grin settling back down into a smile that makes Cass’s stomach twist and his whole body heat up. The voice inside his head begs him to stop while he’s ahead, to stop looking at Nero like that, to spare his own feelings just this once. 

“A Breaker, huh? I thought you were just learning guns.” Nero gives Cass a light jab in the side. “Don’t tell me you’re gonna be running around bagging demon guts between fights.” 

“I--huh?” 

And then Cass gets it. All the heat drains out of his body at once. He shoves his numb fingers under his knees, stares wide-eyed into the dark fields all around them. He’s never known Nero to be an optimist, but maybe that’s just it. He wasn’t there when it happened, he doesn’t  _ know _ the extent of it. All he has is what Cass has told him. 

“I can’t…” Cass chokes on the words even as he begs himself to just get it over with. 

“Can’t?” Nero snorts. Out of the corner of his eye, Cass sees Nero turn his head up to look at the stars. “You’re not that squeamish, are you?”

“I can’t do it.” Cass murmurs, and he can feel the moment that ‘something’s wrong’ feeling clicks in Nero. A beat passes. Then Nero looks at him. 

“What?” 

“I can’t be a demon hunter with this leg. I can’t go back to-” He can hear Nero’s breath stop. Cass bites at his lip until it splits- it’s been so dry lately that it doesn’t take much. In his imaginary conversations about the leg, there was never any reason to explain the gory details of broken he was. Nero just always knew. Cass finds some words, and they don’t feel like his own. “Have you heard of a comminuted fracture?”

“No?”

“It’s when you get hit so hard that it gets snapped into bits.” Cass slides a hand up his right thigh, stopping a few inches from where it meets the hip. 

“Hey, come on.” Nero huffs a mirthless little laugh. “You’ve gotten hurt so many times over the years. You’re really gonna give up over a broken leg?”

“You think I  _ want to do this _ ?” Cass’s voice cracks. “You think I want to start over again? I pushed, and I pushed, and I _ pushed _ until I broke. When you break like that and you don’t heal right, and it just fucks everything up. Everything.”

He bows under the weight of it, ducking away from Nero. Nero grips his shoulder tightly, trying to coax Cass to look him in the eye. Cass wants to, wants to take back everything he said with a smile and laugh that he was just  _ joking _ . Every second he refuses to raise his head just makes it worse and worse, but he just doesn’t know how to string together words that he won’t regret. 

“You went to the doctor right after the Qlipoth,” Nero’s voice climbs. “You got treatment! The hell d’you mean you didn’t-” Nero stops short, eyes wide. “Your cast.”

“Took it off early. Bribed the doctor until he agreed.” Cass raises his head finally, and Nero’s hand drops from his shoulder. It lays by Cass’s hip, propping Nero up- he’s leaning in and Cass is leaning back. How easy it could be to just hold his ground and see how far Nero would go when it was finally him pushing into Cass’s space for once. 

Nero’s hand tightens into a fist. It squeezes tighter and tighter until the leather squeaks and his forearm trembles. His voice starts and stops a dozen times before his question finally hisses out.

“ _ Why _ ?”

Cass has asked himself that question every night since he went back to the doctor, since he learned about the complications, since his cane started feeling as heavy to hold as his useless leg. Tottering around in his cast doesn’t feel half so bad in foresight as it did at the time, back when there was a city to repair and a home he stayed in but didn’t belong in. 

_ Aren’t you sick of me yet? _

“Because I’m fucking stupid,” He says instead. 

* * *

The desert again. Being here again is like the memory of a childhood bedroom with every item in it standing at the slightest tilt, disorienting in a way that someone could only name when they saw it all made right again.

It takes Cass a moment to realize he’s standing still.

He whips his head around, world swirling around him an opposing motion that makes his stomach twist in knots. He was walking before. For the past week or more he’s been walking, directionless but purposeful, and now he’s standing still and he can’t remember the way he was supposed to go. 

Has the sun always been that high? He takes a step, a gamble that he can still find his way, a prayer that he won’t be stepping right back into the dunes where he started. 

His foot collides with his cane. He crashes into the sand. His leg throbs in searing bursts, and a scream tears its way out of his throat. 

"Damn it!" He claws at the sand, “ _ Damn it _ !”

He flings the cane as hard as he can. The metal piece goes skittering and spinning across the dunes. It sinks into the sand, handle jutting up into the sky and image warping with the heat.

* * *

“Hey, wake up.” A small hand closes around Cass’s shoulder and shakes him a little. Cass clutches his hand around it blindly, taking a sharp breath as he orients himself. He’s on the couch of the van. He can’t remember how he got there, but he has some guesses. 

“I’m up,” he croaks, blinking up at Nico. The sun is full blaze outside and his bare arms are stuck to the leather of the couch. “What time is it?”

“Noon. Gettin’ kinda drowsy now, wanted you to take the wheel. We ain’t too far now anyway.”

Cass rubs his palms over his face, trying to work away the haze. “Yeah, I’m on it. Sorry for sleeping in.”

“You might want this.” Nico takes one of Cass’s hands and puts a mug in it- the same one he was drinking from last night if he recalls, but this morning it’s filled to the brim with black coffee. Cass mutters his thanks and Nico sucks her bottom lip, crossing her arms. He empties the entire mug before he manages to peel himself from the seat. 

“Sleep well.”

“Yup.” 

Cass slides into the driver’s seat, dashboard fans making his hair flutter around his face. Nero’s in the passenger seat with his feet kicked up, eyes closed. His hands are folded across his stomach, gloveless; his silver wedding band shines under the sun filtering through the window. 

Cass starts the engine, puts it into first gear, and starts rolling along the highway. 

“ ‘Morning, sleeping beauty.” Nero mumbles. Cass glances at him- Nero’s eyes are still closed, but Cass can’t stop himself from bending the rearview mirror towards himself. 

“Did you carry me down last night?” Cass finger-combs his hair, eyes flicking between the mirror and the road. 

“Yeah. You kinda passed out on me.” 

Cass winces and straightens the mirror. “Sorry.”

“Don’t mention it.” Nero turns in his seat, watching the landscape roll by through the side window. The van hums and Cass shifts another gear. “You doing alright?”

“I could really use like three more cups of coffee, but I’ll live. Like I said, I’ll be fine to do my job by the time we get there. ” Cass scratches his chin, sighing when he feels the prickle of uneven stubble. “I didn’t keep you up too long, did I?”

“Nah, I napped most of yesterday. I just made breakfast after we came down.” Nero straightens back up and slides his feet off the dashboard. There’s a pause, heavy enough that Cass knows to wait for the rest. “Did you know you talk in your sleep?” 

“Nico’s complained about it once or twice.” Cass gnaws at his lip, wary of the split he’s already worked onto it. “Can’t be anything more embarrassing than you’ve heard me say drunk.”

Cass sucks in a breath- he should really re-learn the art of keeping his mouth shut. Being desperate to fill a silence is gambling on his ability to not bring up something stupid. Nero opens his mouth to speak, pauses to consider his words carefully. 

“About that,” Nero’s voice drops low. “We’ve gotta talk.” 

“We really don’t.” Cass says, as calmly as he can manage. If it were up to him they’d just keep bouncing from one small chat to another without ever exploring the trenches between. He checks his mirrors to have something to do other than hold the car steady as they take a steady curve around a hillside. There’s some skid marks on the road, probably from some idiot who tried to drift it. “I was being dramatic. You know how I get when I drink.” 

Nero’s head turns toward him just the tiniest bit. His head bobs as Cass swerves around a bit of debris on the road. “...What?”

“It’s just a leg. It sucks, yeah, but I’m already getting used to the cane.” Cass’s fingers drum on the steering wheel in an anxious rhythm. He’s got the almost uncontrollable urge to floor it, but they’ve got a blind corner around the hill and it’s hard to navigate with all the debris littering the road. “It’s really not that bad.”

“Cass,” Nero sighs and scratches the back of his neck. “I’m not talking about last night. I… I heard your phone call at the bar-”

Cass slams the breaks and the van swerves, nearly toppling onto one end. From the back they hear a loud thump followed by a string of accented curses. Nero coughs out a few curses of his own, a question if Nico taught him to drive like that, then finally looks up to what stopped them. 

Pietas was a small town, so small Nico had to check three different maps to even find it. It was the kind of town few people visited, fewer still ever left. The whole thing was built around a cathedral, a crowning achievement of the population’s collective devotion to their faith. Pietas was probably once the kind of beautiful and ancient that even its own people marveled at. But that was before the buildings lost walls and roofs, before their bricks were crushed to dull pebbles, before shards of stained glass filled the grooves in the cobblestone roads. 

Cass can’t help but overlay the fantasy of what the town might have been over the reality of it and wonder how long ago it was that the town was more than skeletons of structures and corpse-lined streets. 

“Shit.” Nero murmurs, just as Nico dazedly steps up between the front seats and leans over to stare out the window. She whistles a long low note, the same tired-but-not-too-surprised sound she makes whenever he has to start his smithing project over. 

“Pietas wasn’t this much of a shitshow last time I checked.” Nico drawls. Cass bites down the desire to claim an ‘I told you so’. 

“You think that woman- Aina- was expecting all this?” Cass leans his head against the wheel. “It would explain how much she offered.”

“Maybe. Or it got worse in the time it took to get here.”

“Hey, I did my best. We were doin’ ninety the whole way here.” Nico tosses up a devil breaker. Nero catches it behind his back and his arm melts away into blue flashes of light as he locks the Overture into his elbow joint. He pops the door open. 

“Wait,” Cass raises his head, brow creasing. “You’re still going?” 

Nero turns to Cass, not quite settling back into his seat. “Uh, yeah? Why not?”

“You’re-” 

He doesn’t know why. There’s too many reasons for it. Pick your poison- is it knowing that Nero can fail, that this job is too suspicious, that he has a wife now, that he has a baby on the way? Or maybe it’s because really, this is the first time he’s ever had to watch Nero leave without him?

“...This is too much.” Cass settles. Nero flops back down into his seat, brow creased. “You can tell too, demons don’t just show up this quickly on their own.” 

He sighs through his nose, the kind of noise Cass’s father used to make when he asked stupid questions as a child. Nico’s head flicks from side to side, looking between them. 

“You said we could leave,” Cass presses. His mouth clamps tight around words like ‘your wife’, and ‘pregnant’, and ‘baby’, because bringing that up now is an argument Cass isn’t ready to have and because he hopes, distantly, that the fact that he wants to go will be enough for Nero. 

“Worst-case, yeah. Doesn’t mean we came all this way to half-ass it. If there are still demons picking at bones in there I'm gonna handle them, and if our client is still in there I'm getting her out."

"And get our payment." Nico supplies.

"And get our payment," Nero agrees, eyes flicking back towards Cass. "This is gonna take me three hours tops. You just focus on finishing your-" Nero gestures at the cluttered workbench, “and I’ll be back soon.”

Nero pops out of the van backwards through the open door and kicks it shut as he turns to the city gates. Nico slides into the passenger seat and they watch Nero saunter through, hand resting on Red Queen's hilt.

"Y'know he's damn near invincible, right?" Nico pulls a box out of her back pocket, taps a cigarette onto her palm. Automatically, Cass flicks open his lighter and holds it out to her.

"It doesn't make this easier." 

“You two split up all the damn time back when you were kickin’ demon ass, this ain’t so different.” Nico sucks the smoke in, exhales it through her nostrils. Cass rubs his temples with both thumbs, chin curling down to his chest. He doesn’t realize she was watching him until she’s bumping his shoulder with her wrist. She waves the cigarette by his face until he plucks it from her fingers. 

“Yes, it is.” He takes a deep drag and hands it back to her filter-first. Nero’s out of sight now, vanished around some corner. Cass turns the engine off. “Did I say anything weird in my sleep?”

“Oh y’know, the usual.” Nico grimaces, “Lots’a ‘dammit’ and ‘fuck’ and whimpering. Called out for Nero once or twice too, and not in the fun kinda way.”

Cass drags a hand down his face. “And you didn’t, I don’t know,  _ stop me _ ?”

“The hell d’you think I woke you up for, dumbass?” Nico snaps, “You really think I needed a nap for the last thirty-some minutes of the drive?”

“Oh.”

“Yeah, ‘ _ oh _ ’, stupid.”

* * *

One hour passes. Nero doesn’t call for a refill.

It isn’t that surprising. His new breaker holster lets him carry enough for most jobs.

Another hour passes.

Still no call. Maybe it’s easier than they expected, and Nero doesn’t really have to use that many of them. Either that or Nico’s quality control has gotten better. 

And another hour.

Nero overestimates how fast he can handle jobs sometimes. 

And another.

Maybe he’s having trouble finding the client.

And another.

The phone rings. 

“Fucking-” Cass twitches away from his work, nearly melting the engraving on his project. He flicks the welder off and pushes his face shield up. Beside him, the time blares in bright red digits- 5:34 PM. He slings his work gloves onto the table. “Took him long enough.”

“‘Long as he got the cash, I ain’t complaining.” Nico yawns and stretches in her seat before plucking the phone off the receiver. The sun filtering through the windows is bathing the van in a hazy yellow, and that kind of afternoon light always makes her doze off. “You think you can start us off on the road again? Just a few hours at least.” 

“Yeah.” Cass flips up the workbench and shuffles over to the kitchen. “I’m making some coffee. Ask Nero if he wants any.”

“You get the goods?” Nico lilts into the phone, then waits. Cass pulls the coffee pot off its hook, hums as he fills it enough for a cup and a half, because Nero always fills his halfway up with milk anyway. Nico’s voice drops, and Cass can barely hear her over the swishing of the water. “...Nero?”

Cassius sets down the pot slowly, staring into the dark stains in the wallpaper by the sink. The shapes find meanings even as his mind goes blank. There’s a person, and there’s an empty house, and there’s the shape of that bloodstain Cass found on the garage floor the day he came back from a trip to Fortuna, and there’s the hospital bed with Nero’s motionless body, and--

Nico sets the phone back into the receiver. “Line went dead.”

“Give me the storage key.” Cass limps to the front seats. One hand presses into every surface to keep him upright and the other splays palm-up and outstretched, demanding. “Now.”

“You’re fuckin’ crazy, you know that?” Nico gets to her feet, arms shooting out to steady him. 

“Don’t stop me-” Cass wants to slap her hands away, scream in her face, rip her van apart bit by bit. How funny that every time he thinks he’s lost everything that matters to him, he manages to find something else precious to destroy. 

He closes his hands over her arms and hopes he’s holding her up instead of dragging her down. 

“Whady’a think running out there is gonna solve, huh?” Nico squeezes Cass’s forearms, dropping her cigarette to the floor and stomping it under her boot. 

“What if he needs-” Cass’s gaze whips around the room; he searches for something, anything that might be able to help Nero where he can’t. The room blurs around him. “I’m not just going to leave him out there!” 

Nico turns her face away for a moment and chews her lip. 

“Let me have the bike,  _ please _ .” Cass shakes her. “You want to be the one to tell Kyrie we didn’t even try?” 

She yanks one of his hands off her arm and for a moment Cass thinks she’s really going to just leave Nero there. Instead, she reaches behind her and plucks something out from behind the driver’s seat and places it in Cass’s hand. 

“Take this with you.” Cass stares down at the new cane, hand falling open to get a better look. It’s weighty, polished steel all the way from handle to tip and embossed with graceful swoops, lines tapering and meeting in outlines of petal-like filigrees. It’s so utterly not-Nico that he can’t imagine she made it, but she would never give him anything else. 

Under his gaze she grabs it by the handle, twists, and tugs just enough for Cass to see the flash of a thin blade. “For  _ emergencies _ . Don’t do anythin’ stupid.” 

“When have I ever done something stupid?” Cass mutters, and Nico grumbles under his breath as she places the storage keys in his other hand. His fist closes around them and he squeezes them tight. “Thank you, Nico.”

“Take some breakers too. Yours especially.” She hesitates a moment, hands on her hips. Then she yanks him into a hug, squeezing his middle tight for a moment. They don’t really do hugs, and for a moment Cass’s arms hover at his sides awkwardly. Then they close around her shoulders, and he holds her close. 

It’s nice up until she shoves a hand between them and pries him off. “Save the cheesy shit fer later, you ass. And you better come back.” 

* * *

Cass whips around another corner, nearly dragging a knee with how hard the motorcycle tilts. He’s taken to scanning every street in an effort to find Nero- there’s no trail delicately marked with Blue Rose’s shells that he can follow, despite his lofty hopes. And besides that the city is a nightmare to navigate; it’s not quite post-Qlipoth, but it’s close. The streets are lined with the remnants of homes and the bodies of those who didn’t evacuate in time. If he went any slower it would be easier to swerve through the maze of destruction, but Cass has neither the time nor the energy for that. 

He wracks his brain for the details. He knows the client is paying a lot, maybe that means she’s rich? Maybe she’ll be holed up in a massive home, one of the few still left standing? He digs his teeth into his lip, the sting just enough to serve as a thumbtack in this moment- next time this happens, if there’ll even be a next time, don’t fuck this up. 

Cass banks another corner and spots the dead end before he’s even made it halfway down the street. The bike slows to a stop. He yanks off his helmet, and buries a hand in his sweat-plastered hair. He needs a strategy but he doesn’t have  _ time _ for one. As it is, all he’s got are what he could manage to clip onto his belt or his bike before he rode off- unlike Nero he doesn’t have a dedicated Breaker holster, and two was all he could carry. 

If his project fails, they’ve got Ragtime to try and get away. That’s about it, as far as his plans go. 

But none of it will matter if he doesn’t find Nero. Every second he wastes on another dead end weighs on him like a fresh failure, feels as heavy as Nero’s limp hand in his. Nico called Nero ‘near-invincible’, and she was right. It’s only that the incompleteness of it- the fact that Nero has lost before, the fact that it was catastrophic- makes the reassurance useless. 

All he can think about is Nero in that hospital bed, curtains drawn and room dark. He wasn’t there when it happened, he didn’t  _ know _ . He asked himself why the room wasn’t glowing that familiar soft blue, and then he felt the flat sheets where Nero’s arm should’ve been and understood for the first time the power of words like ‘near’ and ‘almost’, like ‘you’re  _ near _ invincible and I still  _ almost _ lost you’. 

Cass throws his helmet on the ground, digs both hands into his hair. Focus, he has to focus. The client contacted Nero back before the city went to shit. Nero may not have predicted the massive detour, but he would’ve known the drive would take at least a few hours. Dead clients don’t pay well, so he’d tell them to find somewhere safe they could bunk down and hide out. But where would they think to go?

Cass flicks the kickstand down and walks over to his helmet. It’s rolled all the way to the intersection and lays face-down against the cobblestones. Cass turns it over with his cane and winces; the debris all over the street has beaten the hell out of his visor. He plucks it out of the rubble, contemplating- he tries not to ride without gear, but he also tries not to wear anything covered in demon guts- when he turns it over and a rock falls out. His eyes follow the motion unthinkingly and land where the rock did, right next to a small, twisted sheet of blue metal. Cass leans down to take a closer look. Overture-- it’s a piece of Overture. 

Cass’s head snaps up and he stares down the other path of the intersection, a short tunnel of buildings before it opens up into a massive open area. A cathedral sits in the center of it. 

“Of fucking course.” Cass whispers, as a massive claw bursts through the marble ceiling. 

* * *

Cass clenches his jaw tight, eyeing the staircase up to the cathedral. He’s never done this before, but there’s no time to do anything else- if Nero is still alive, the best way to get him out is to just grab him and go. Running away is all Cass can do nowadays. 

Cass revs his motorcycle once, twice, then guns it up the narrow steps. It rattles hard beneath him, climbing faster and faster until he shoots off the top step and launches himself across the entranceway. His front wheel bursts through the wooden door, announcing his presence with an explosion of splinters. 

He spots the demon first, which is no surprise. The thing is so massive that it takes up half the cathedral. If Cass had ever seen this kind of demon before, he’s sure he’d have remembered it- it’s the ugliest fucking thing he’s ever seen. It’s like a trypophobia nightmare in the shape of an octopus, standing on tentacles made of oozing, rotting meat that slide in and out the holes in its bonelike, round shell. And as Cass drifts into a stop the thing turns to him slowly, abandoning its search through the hole in the roof. It moves towards him, half slithering and half gliding on trails of its own ooze, and curls itself around the doorway, barely ten feet away. 

One of its limbs snaps out toward him so fast he can’t dodge it, so fast he can’t even think. But it misses. It goes crashing through the doorway, flicking this way and that, searching. It’s blind.

“Hey jackass, you already forget about me?” 

The yell grabs the demon’s attention and it twists around, repositioning to find the source of the noise. Its limbs shuffle around and there- a gap opens between two of them, less than four feet wide. Cass sees his chance and he takes it, leaning as far down as he can and gunning his bike through the gap. The demon notices at the last second. It’s much faster now that it knows it has new prey, but the bike’s engine echoes in the space and the demon’s strikes are too imprecise from that distance to catch him. 

Cass drifts into another stop and yanks off his helmet, head whipping up to stare at the ceiling. And there Nero is, perched on a chandelier that sways unsteadily beneath his feet. Nero looks bad, exhausted and bleeding in thick rivulets down his forehead. Cass can’t say for certain how long it’s been since he called, but it’s been too much already. Cass’s eyes water and he squeezes them shut, taking a slow breath. 

“Sorry, Cass. Started the pickup call right before that ugly son of a bitch interrupted.” Nero points behind Cass and he twists around. There’s a side door, just off to the right of the apse. The ooze from the demon coats the entire wall, hardened into an almost glassy finish. “The client’s in there, but I can’t get her out until I finish that thing.”

“Forget the client, we need to-” Cass starts out, but there it is- a movement out of the corner of his eye. He grips his handlebars and just as demon’s limb stabs forward he dodges, gunning the motorcycle parallel to the limb. There’s a protrusion where the limb meets the rest of the body, and Cass swerves around it automatically before he recognizes the shape. It’s Nero’s sword. 

He comes to a rest back where he started, by the front doors. If he’s got to ride a circuit around the demon for the entirety of his impending yelling match with Nero, he’s gonna run out of gas before he even makes it out of the building. Nero seems to get the same idea at least. His wings open up as he leaps off the chandelier, gliding down to the floor in front of Cass. Up close, his wounds look even worse. There’s patches of purplish, half-healed skin all over his arms. 

“Is that  _ Red Queen  _ embedded in its side?” Cass hisses. He doesn’t know how he didn’t notice its absence before it almost brained him. 

“Yeah. You know that melting crap it’s got all over it? Hardens in less than a second.” Nero turns to the demon and they watch it slowly recover and push itself upright. “Every time I try to cut into it, it either steals my sword with that flesh fondue or fills up its cracks with it.”

“Your wounds?” Cass asks quietly. 

“Still healing pretty fast.” Nero catches the look in his eyes and continues, voice dropping into something more serious. “Don’t ask for details. Just don’t let that ooze get on you."

“So what the hell’s your plan?” Cass tears his eyes away from Nero’s wounds and looks at his breaker holster instead. He’s completely out. 

“First step is getting my sword back..!” Nero says, and he shoots off toward the demon. Cass sees it coming and tries to grab for him, but his hand closes around empty air. He’s fast but he’s also  _ loud _ , and the demon starts rearing its limbs up to strike. Cass bends down, grabs a twisted piece of metal from the rubble, and whips it at the demon. It flies true and manages, miraculously, to fly through one of the holes in its body. The demon doesn’t even seem to notice.

_ “ _ Oi!” Cass screams desperately, then revs his bike over and over and over. The demon twitches toward him, back towards Nero. 

Then it strikes at Cass. He tries the same move as before. He flicks the bike to the side, swerves towards the side of the cathedral, staring at the tip of the demon’s claw like he’s measuring the time he has left to escape. And then he doesn’t turn hard enough. 

Target fixation, rookie mistake. 

The claw crashes into the ground right at Cass’s back wheel. The floor erupts beneath him and he goes flying. He lands hard on his arm and rolls, coating himself in the pulverized marble dust. His ears ring, too loud for him to focus on anything but the noise. He comes to a stop when he hits the wall. He curls into himself, wheezing in pain, and his motorcycle slides just past where his head once lay. 

He rolls onto his back- or he tries, at least. He lifts his arm to steady his roll, and pain sears him so quickly that he thinks he’s going to be sick. He bites back a cry, good leg curling up to his chest like it can shield him from the agony. He slides a trembling hand to his left shoulder. It curls weakly around something cold and heavy, crumpled into a nonsensical shape. He squeezes his eyes shut, grips the piece tight, and huffs out a few quick breaths. Then he rips it out. 

It’s the twisted piece of metal he threw. 

The ringing fades away and sound returns to the world. Red Queen is revving, Nero is yelling, and then there’s a sickening  _ crack _ . Cass’s blood turns to ice and a million thoughts race through his head, half-baked plans to get away and calculations of how fast Nero can heal if the demon doesn’t end him on the spot and screaming, just screaming about how there was more Cass could have done if he just tried harder. 

It all passes through him in the time it takes to whip his head up and see that he was wrong. Red Queen’s free of the crystalized ooze, swinging through the air and sending shards of it across the room as Nero dives towards him, expression wound as tight as Cass has ever seen it. Behind him, the demon shrieks and flails in agony, every limb but the broken one whipping through the air.

“Cass!” Nero drags Cass up off the ground by the open front of his jacket and Cass hisses in pain. Carefully, he braces the injured man against the wall. “Are you okay-” He spots the puncture in Cass’s jacket, swallows hard, “You need to get the hell out of here.”

“It’s hollow,”

“ _ What _ ?” Nero’s face twists in confusion. “What are you talking about?”

“You said it seals its cracks in seconds. We have to break it in a way it can’t fix.” Cass’s voice is soft, contemplative. “And it’s hollow.”

“You have an idea?”

Cass unclips his breaker from his belt and holds it up to Nero. Nero takes it by the wrist slowly and turns it over to look at it, watching the way the glossy black paint shifts into shades of deep purple and red. Its shape is almost organic, joints hidden in a way Nico has never bothered with, and startlingly familiar except for the color- Nero’s Bringer being an inspiration is leagues clearer than the arm’s actual function. 

“This is the arm I was working on. I call it Hellcat.” Cass murmurs. “Nico did all the hard parts, but she left the rest to me so it’s not perfect yet, but it’s…”

Nero flips the arm over and laughs lightly, pressing his fingers against the rubber grips on the palm. “Paw pads?”

“It’s based on Shadow.” Cass eyes the demon- they’re being quiet enough that it can’t quite find them but it’s slithering around the room, limbs darting out to stab randomly and try its luck. It’s found their side of the cathedral, narrowing down the space around them. “If you charge it up, it goes full Hedgehog.”

“Big enough to burst that thing open?”

“More than.” Cass unclips Ragtime, places it in Nero’s other hand. “Think you can find a way in?”

Nero grabs Cass and drags him down to the floor just as a claw crashes into the wall above them. Nero snaps Cass’s breaker onto his belt and lets his arm melt away to make space for Ragtime.

“Time to find out.” The breaker clicks into his elbow socket and he dives towards the demon, entire body melting into a torrent of blue flames. 

Cass has only seen Nero’s devil trigger once, and even then it was just to show it off- seeing it like this is entirely different, like this form was built to be seen in motion. Involuntarily his hands tighten around the handlebars of his bike and it roars as he settles onto it, never peeling his eyes away from Nero. His body glows so brightly that Cass doesn’t even notice the way Ragtime flickers with light and starts to hiss, oblivious to Nero charging it up until the room is bathed in grey and the air turns to molasses. 

10.

Nero slams his elbow joint into Cass’s breaker, connecting the pieces together with a purple flash of light. He grabs Red Queen. He draws it, braces it with both hands in front of him as he charges in.




Nero stabs the tip of it through one of the holes in the demon’s shell, through one of the openings no wider than Cass’s wrist. The blade gets caught on the edges of the shell instead of slipping through. Nero pushes, pushes harder, revs the blade. 




The ooze starts coating Red Queen, climbs higher and higher and crystalizes around the blade. Nero charges Cass’s breaker and holds it at its peak. Out of the corner of his eye, Cass watches the way the limbs coalesce all around him. A final, desperate act from the demon. 




Cass leans down, grips his cane where it’s clipped into the side of his bike. He knows now that it’s not going to work. Nero’s not going to get it open fast enough. The second the time runs out, the cage of the demon’s limbs are going to close around him, and there will be no second chances.




There are choices in life that feel inevitable. Maybe that’s what heuristics really are- homebrewed fate. He has so little time to ponder how stupid he knows his choice is. Even then, would it matter?

Cass unsheathes the blade in his cane, holds it as tight as he cranks his motorcycle for a launch.




Cass moves as slowly as the world around him. It gives him time to aim his sword as his he slides it easily through one of the holes. He lets the bike fly out from beneath him. Self-preservation ranks below his love of Nero. It always has. Maybe now this is solidifying that statement, a bracket denoting the inclusivity of his end- it always  _ did _ . 




He wrenches the sword hard even before his feet touch the ground. He speaks a silent apology to himself, to the person he might have been if he ever learned how to be a person to whom Nero wasn’t everything. 




It isn’t working. He grips the sword with his bad arm, grits his teeth as he forces it down even harder. The apology is bitter even to himself, because he knows it now- everything that Cass has left in the world has Nero tangled up in it; he could never have hoped to cut him out. 




Maybe dying for Nero is just homebrewed fate, a choice he could never stop himself from making. Or maybe it’s just sad. 

The shell snaps. 

Cass prys it open. 

The breaker flys through the gap, as bright as a lit firework. 

1.

The arm bursts open, shredding itself as it expands with spikes as sharp as spears. Cass watches those spikes in slow motion. 

And he knows he’s out of time. 

0\. 

Arms close around him, a body wraps around him, and then the demon bursts into pieces and Cass can’t process the world for a moment. Then comes the dizziness, that ringing in his ears. When the pain comes, it’s less than he expected. 

He has wondered a thousand different times what it would be like for Nero to hold him. Absently he measures the differences between those fantasies and the reality. He always thought his heart would race- especially now, especially when there could still be danger and they still could have failed. Instead, it’s like everything is swept away into a haze of nothingness. The world stops exactly where Nero’s arms fold around his back and his wings blanket his head, the only thing that matters is the way they’re tucked around each other. 

He can’t fight it when Nero’s arms loosen around him, when they slowly roll him onto his back. Even Cass’s soft gasps of air fill his lungs with dust, and his back rattles with his weak coughs. Something hot lands on his collar. Then another. He tries to open his eyes, fails twice before he finally manages. Nero’s blocking out the late afternoon sun filtering through the hole in the ceiling, propped entirely over him. 

The floor shakes beneath Cass and he registers, belatedly, a thundering crunch beside his head. Nero’s knuckles twist into the rubble.

“Why the hell won’t you just stay back for once?!” Nero yells, and another one of his tears fall. It lands on Cass’s cheek. “You tell me you can’t do this anymore and then what, you just fucking toss yourself back in there over and over?”

“Is,” Cass swallows, trying to get the hoarseness out of his voice. Cass watches the way the light wreaths around Nero’s shoulders. His jacket, his arms, his neck are all soaked with blood. Punctures from when he tried to shield Cass with his body. “How bad is it?”

A long moment passes where they just stare at each other. Nero’s eyes dart all over Cass’s body, nostrils flaring, harsh breaths making his shoulders shake. Cass would regret making him look, if he could think of anything other than how much he hates seeing Nero cry. 

“You’re… you’re gonna have to get a new jacket. It’s shredded up. And you’re bleeding all over it.” Nero’s voice cracks. He’s leaning back, farther away from Cass, and Cass hates the gap but can’t close it anymore. “ _ Why?” _

“You keep asking questions like that.” Cass murmurs, letting his eyes fall shut. “You know why, asshole.” 

“You!” Nero’s voice sounds far off for a second. “Hit redial, now! Tell Nico to hurry the hell up!” Then his voice is back near Cass, and Cass’s hand is being squeezed tight. “You’re right. I know. We’ve got a lot to talk about when we get out of here. Just-- I’m gonna run out and I’m going to get Nico-” 

“Nero,” He opens his eyes, watches the way Nero’s glancing desperately back at the door. 

“ _ What _ ?” Nero snaps, squeezing Cass’s hand harder. His teeth clench tight in a grimace. “Just give me a minute, I’ll be right back.”

“Calm down. Please. Don’t let go.” Cass tries to return the squeeze. His hand is already failing him. “ _ Stay _ . Don’t leave me here. Please.”

“I’m not leaving you!” Nero squeezes his hand even tighter. “Nico’s got stuff in her van that can help, we need to get something for- for… for you.”

“ _ Stay, _ ” Cass’s mouth clamps tight around words like ‘love’, and ‘goodbye’, because bringing that up now is an argument Cass doesn’t have time to have and because he hopes, distantly, that the fact that he wants Nero to stay will be enough for him.

And this time, finally, it is. 

When Cass’s eyes close he dreams of his desert again. And then he dreams of rain. And then he dreams of grass sprouting from the sand, and it feels so right. He dreams of sitting among the plants, he dreams of turning his face up to the sky and the water sliding down his face. 

And then he dreams of nothing at all. 

**Author's Note:**

> CONTENT WARNING: character death, drinking to cope (mentioned in the tags but I thought I would mention it again), permanent disability caused by injury, general self-destructive behavior
> 
> \--
> 
> A/N: I went back and forth over and over about the things that I wanted to write for this story, and a lot of things in it (especially the ending) are extremely different from what I originally had in mind. I know for a fact some of the themes and such are discongruent because of that, so I hope to eventually write an alternate version that's more in line with what I originally planned; IMO my original plan was less abrupt and a lot more of what I wanted to do with my character, I was just very angsty when I finished it. The few times I try to write deep it's really easy for me to get wrapped up in trying to say too many things with the story, so my big ol' bad for that.


End file.
